‘Study’ Claims Fox News Viewers Have Average IQ of 80

This is dated December 4th — last Tuesday — but it’s just getting around now. I’ll reproduce the whole news release on the next page, but here’s the basic story.

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.

Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

The press release has a name — “P. Nichols” — and a phone number attached, so I called. I got a call back from a 202 area code. Okay, Washington, D.C. Not clear why the press release is datelined “Birmingham Alabama” but okay. Oddly, the phone number turns out to be a free Google Voice number.

The caller identified himself as P. Nichols but didn’t give a full first name. He was happy to be interviewed about the study, however. I’d identified myself as the Science Editor at PJ Media; my first question was where I could find a copy of the study.

He laughed a little and said “it’s a real study, done with standard polling techniques, but the study was funded by a Republican PAC, and I’m tied up in so many contracts and things that I can’t possibly show you the actual study.”

He went on to describe the methodology. “This Republican group had a particular result in mind, and we helped them find it. The way they put it was that they needed to separate the ‘TEA Party’ types from the Republican Party. ‘If your hand has cancer, you want to cut off the hand before it kills you,’ was their explanation of the motivation.”

The study, he said, was a four-year study with more than 5000 subjects. “We didn’t look at areas with educated populations, or in cities. In fact, we had trouble finding people in those categories who watched Fox News. Instead, we looked for uneducated, rural people — the people who actually believe that women’s bodies will prevent conception by rape. Those sorts of people.”

Interestingly, he also said the motivation for the study was the election results this year. Hmm.

Now, I’d Googled for the “Intelligence Institute” — all I found was a guy in Sydney, Australia, who does business intelligence consulting (and whose email I suspect will be a real horror by tomorrow). So I asked about that. “Oh, that’s a pseudonym,” Nichols said. “The people who funded this study wanted these results to come out, and the news release organization wouldn’t accept this unless we gave an organization name.”

The description of the population they selected struck me odd: rural, un-educated — wouldn’t that be selecting for people with lower IQ? He disagreed, but said, “The sample was selected with a goal in mind.”

I finished the interview by asking some summary questions. Were the results going to be published? “No, can’t publish the results, I wouldn’t risk the funding groups’ lawyers.” And the funding source was confidential? “Yes, I can’t identify the source of the funding.”

I pointed out that this added up to a not very convincing story — the population selection was, by his own admission, made with a predetermined outcome in mind, and he couldn’t identify the source, or the source of funding, and they were releasing it using an admittedly made-up institution as the supposed source. He agreed. He said, “The funding source wants these results out. They’d rather have people not believe it’s real than be identified.”

So there you have it. A four-year study sparked by the outcome of the recent election, from an institution that’s admittedly a fake, from a company that won’t identify itself, supposedly funded by a Republican PAC trying to “cut off” the Tea Party like a cancer, using a sample that was chosen with a particular result in mind, with a contact number that’s an anonymous free Google Voice number.

By the way, the link for “further information on this study” actually points to a Huffington Post story about last years’ Fairleigh Dickinson University study. You might recall that study was widely criticized for confusing “well-informed” with “agrees with the legacy media.” It would be interesting to call them and see what they have to say. I think it’s fair to say I’m skeptical. The whole news release follows on the next page.

Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB) December 04, 2012

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.

Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula.

Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers.

Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.”

He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”

The researchers said that an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone’s ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives.

The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.

P. Nichols concludes that he wasn’t shocked by the studies’ results, rather how dramatic their range. “Several previous studies show that self-identified conservatives are less intelligent than self-identified moderates. We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.”

Charlie Martin writes on science, health, culture and technology for PJ Media. Follow his 13 week diet and exercise experiment on Facebook and at PJ Lifestyle

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294 Comments, 127 Threads

1.
clarice feldman

Can there be a greater irony than Yahoo being taken in by an obvious hoax that claims FNC viewers are stupid? I think people with IQs of 80 –which is to say Yahoo readers–are the only ones dumb enough to fall for this.

I question whether it’s worth giving this sleazy little anonymous moron “P. Nichols” publicity. Nevertheless, in 2009 Pew did an actual survey on the issue of who was “better informed” on the news (leaving aside IQ) and the conclusions were interesting:

“The poll tested the audiences of a host of news magazines, radio and television shows, and newspapers on three basic political questions: the majority party in the House of Representatives; the name of the Secretary of State; and the identity of the Prime Minister of Great Britain. On the American political questions, Limbaugh’s radio audience scored the highest, in a virtual tie with viewers of fellow conservative talker Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Hannity and Colmes audience. Eighty-three percent of Limbaugh listeners correctly identified the Democrats as being in control of the House and seventy-one percent were able to correctly name the Secretary of State. On all three questions combined, readers of The New Yorker and The Atlantic fared best. But Limbaugh’s audience easily outperformed those of all three major networks’ nightly news programs, readers of community and daily newspapers, as well as viewers of the news networks CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, CNBC, and MSNBC.”

As one who was once a Democrat and now on the right, I can attest that Republicans are vastly better informed. Regarding IQ, I have no information and will not reveal my own. I can assure P. Nichols, however, that is over 80.

What this blogger finds most fascinating (relevant too) is that leftists are willing to do anything to win. On the other hand, conservatives have too many ‘red lines’, often playing a gentleman’s sport.
Now, while yours truly admires integrity like few others, she also understands that bringing a knife to a gun fight is a loser’s hand.
Therefore, taking many pages out of their playbooks is not only good advice, but it is long over due. Nation-saving too.
The following commentary will prove why a change in tack is mandatory-http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/07/when-authentic-revolutionaries-hold-the-reins-of-american-power-centers-via-the-most-radical-regime-in-u-s-history-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/

Imagine anyone associated with the Libs talking about low I.Q. when a huge percentage of their followers never graduate from high school, have no job, bring more low intelligent children into the world every year and would never watch FOX. Rural people often have more COMMON SENSE in their little finger than most of those in DC & our state capitals. They would never jeopardize their families, home, farms & nation by spending them into oblivion. Where does the so called high I.Q. get you without this common sense factor? NO WHERE Of course, without any records, we don’t know what Obama’s I,Q. is. We do know he has learned all the dirty tricks and slick speach somewhere & we do know from who when we look at his past associates.

One of the biggest issues with media bias is not what they say, but what they question. There was, a long time ago, a reporter in National Review who interviewed reporters who made scientific mistakes, like reporting a link between the Super Bowl and domestic violence. The responses were of the form of, “Oh, I’m really sorry, I did really try to get it right.” Then the one story gets into LEXIS/NEXIS, and gets repeated unquestioned all over the “reliable sources”, at least it did before “bloggers in pajamas”.

But mention an issue with abortion or working / unmarried mothers and the reporters will suddenly become critical thinkers.

I’ll have to hang onto Charlie’s post and your link there, Roger, to use as rebuttal.

As I’m sure you know, Pew does a similar survey every year just based on demographic groups. Every year Repubs score better than Dems, older people do better than younger, and men better than women (darn it!). So going from these surveys, the eeeevil old male Republicans are our best informed folks on current events.

I watch Fox News too, and have a high IQ. After viewing for twelve years, I can attest to its moderation, it is ever “fair and balanced” without decoding those buzz words. However, the fact that both Republicans and conservatives have a voice on it make it worth while in spite of its timidity and tendency to avoid important stories. Compare to communist historiography, as I laid out here: http://clarespark.com/2012/12/08/hobsbawm-obama-israel/.
I am a fan of Charlie Martin’s work and am glad that he writes for PJM.

Some of the best TV journalism (anchors, reporters, shows) around are on Fox News. Also, some of the worst. The three anchors on Fox & Friends for example are not exactly the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. It seems to me that Fox News is not exactly “fair and balanced” (although far more so than MSNBC), but it’s mere existence brings balance to the overall media ecosystem. This concept of journalistic objectivity has always been a chimera anyway.

Of course, MSNBC never claimed not to be partisan. In general, I find that their overall analysis is deeper than anything I’ve seen on Fox News. As always, of course, it depends on which program is being watched. Overall, I like Scarborough and Maddow, not so much the other commentators.

Having talked to several people at work who voted for Obama, I’d say that the typical Obama voter could be characterized as a “low information voter,” i.e., the same folks who knew who Trayvon Martin was but did not know about the looming fiscal cliff. I guess the same voters who also believe that they can continue to receive unlimited Federal largesse without consequences for the nation–those who believe (somehow) that “money grows on trees.”

One such low-information voter I vaguely know (fantasy football league) spouted that only the 1% had anything to worry about if we went over the fiscal cliff. Fortunately, several people of all political stripes informed him that he was pretty ignorant of reality. Before that, I thought he at least had a clue – if he’d bothered to read the article to which he’d posted a link, he wouldn’t have looked like such a moron.

I am a Retired United States Marine, former Aviation Electronics Instructor. I.Q., 136. My wife has a Masters in Special Ed, we both watch Fox. I didn’t know we were deficient in intelligence. Time to go back to school to learn ‘liberal’. Let’s see, where to go, Chicago? Rocky

My experience with the kind of ‘wordsmith intellectual’ wannabe that goes to work as a journo is that often they have a combination of bright-normal to gifted verbal IQs with normal (at best) numerical and visuospatial IQs. Since all too many people mistake articulateness for intelligence…

My IQ tested out at a mere 145 (I was tested by Mensa, and invited to join), and I watch Fox News too; I live in northern Lake County IL, about three miles from the Wisconsin border but hardly Hicksville; and, interestingly enough, no one ever studied me or my Republican voting habits.…

I strongly suspect that the study and methodolgy model orignated by somebody who in fact has/had good democraphics access of the usual FNC viewership. I futher suspect that FNC would agree that their strongest viewership numbers represents a geographical map as suggested.

That said, if one follows and subscribes to such IQ studies as done by numerous researchers such as that reported below, then it would seem somewhat scientifically flawed by a ‘national’ standard. I guess it fit the needs of a particular democraphic, eh?

Who knows what the USURPERS IQ is – you dont and thats for sure. You just know the BS about him that Lame Stream EneMedia has bombarded you with for years. As for reality well his School and College records and results have been meticulously HIDDEN and are carefully and expensively protected by him and his Regime. So his IQ and intellectual achievements are UNKNOWN.

That anyone with an IQ could believe this is simply astounding. The IQ range is on a bell shaped curve, so an IQ of 80 is extremely stupid to be blunt about it. It would be only at about the 10% level. Now if the claimed IQ of the average Fox News viewer was claimed to be, say 95 or maybe even 90, then at least that would be slightly plausible.

Nobody’s picked up on this comment yet, but it’s probably the most important of the thread. It seems to evade most people (including most conservatives), but conservatives — and Christian “white male” conservatives in particular — are slowly being scapegoated in a manner that’s not inconsistent with other out-group scapegoating efforts through history.

It may seem like a stretch now, but the patterns are there. And while gulags don’t appear to be on the horizon, less severe (but nevertheless onerous) ways of punishing the conservative white male scapegoats appear to be on the way.

Evidently, you do not 1) believe in The Constitution, much less follow its laws…Tea Party members do.Nor do you 2) believe in having a job and integrity and motivation to work for a living…Tea Party members do.3) You must not believe in having a budget, living by that budget and NOT overspending…Tea Party members do. And you must love a bloated fed. government that has this contry owing over $16 trillion…$6 trillion caused by Obama in less than 4 years. Tea Party members know that this country will cease to be the United States of America owing more money than could ever be paid; thusly, Communist China, being our primary creditor, can call it cuetains for this country anytime it chooses to do so. Tea Party members do NOT want the United States to lose its sovereignty and become a banana republic. But, obviously, you think the cherry trees in D.C. are really money trees! That is the lowest of IQs.

Seriously – the guy is parodying the anti-semitic rhetoric of the Nazis, as if it applied to the Tea Party. The point being that this “study” is the sort of pseudo-scientific garbage the Nazis produced.

Or very…..Smearing works like that. Just get a crappy narrative out there and say it was a “long-term study” done by the Intelligence Institute. Too many will believe it, not look too closely, then spread the word. That’s how false narratives get planted, smears become established main stream “thought”. Madam “Obamaphone” (the one from the notorious video clip) is likely to present it for argument, score points with her “friends”!

Always look in the opposite direction when libs want you to look a certain way. Libs know that THEY are uninformed so they attack sources of actual information. Fox News bothers them because they don’t control all of it like the other alphabet soup channels. Why don’t some conservative billionaires just buy a network or two?

I’m going to send this article to my former friend who claimed I was “as dumb as a box of rocks” for watching FNC, so he knows that I am smarter than the “box of rocks”. (I don’t mind being underestimated)

The “punchline” gives the ruse away:
“The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.

P. Nichols concludes that he wasn’t shocked by the studies’ results, rather how dramatic their range. “Several previous studies show that self-identified conservatives are less intelligent than self-identified moderates. We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.”’

No respectable scientist would make the claim that a single media source could lower IQ. Nor dance around an ad hominem attack by inferring a subject set has special needs.

MSNBC viewers think Bill Bye is a scientist. It doesn’t take much to get the title “scientist” on the left. A white lab coat, and pair of nerd glasses and an extreme left-wing orientation, and you’re in.

Anthony Watts’ dog is a member in good standing of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Take a look at SAT/ACT results, calculated for IQ, from the college bound students and note the states under 100. Now, imagine the results of giving say the SAT/ACT or Wordum tests to the ‘adult’ base viewer/participant of FNC, MSNBC, CNN or any popular online or radio medium and calulating the results for IQ also. I suspect you’d find the vast majority of their bases not willing to participate, knowing the purpose of the study.

Most of us should know that all kinds of ‘internal’ studies are done in the sphere of politics. Given that there is currently a decimated GOP it would not suprise me to find validity in such a study having taken place — especially involving the divisive religious social movement inside the party since the 80s.

That was my speculation for the faked National Guard memos that Dan Rather fell so hard for — that someone wanted to reel in CBS and Rather by setting a hook with bait tailored to someone with a Leftist bias.

in God’s word the Bible Jesus say: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’

So the Jews now give gifts to celebrate when the light from the candles perform a great sign of God’s presence for the needy Hebrew people and the Christian get ready to celebrate when God with the highest IQ in all the universe become little baby with toothless retard smile what a relief ,comfort bliss and all the dumb animals besides his girl Mama and aged Papa were the first to greet him in the cave and to this day 99.9% of the human and their stink are blind to the fact the retard animals are much smarter than they are if they press the right button yikes when one seee a dear turn into beauty young woman dripping with divine love for you Stay away from my pet you hunters !!! and so it goes erudite big boy fight to be first in line to try to perform their human stink and always try to beat out the other fella with a new perfume for their huamn stink then they get old and no one lestens to them any more after all that hard work they do to improve human IQ as they go back to retard smile if they blessed to live to see that day

This is good young fellas you listen to me . Don’t be afraid of becoming retard . There are more important things such as the gift from God to see your old soul not that it may not frighten you but their are other souls if you saw no man could remain at peace with such sights
I speak the TRuth

The prophet Isaiah

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

You poor man (or woman). What on earth are you trying to say? You are simply incoherent. If you’re just a needy lost soul looking for some kind of response from people to bring meaning to your life, you’ve come to the right place. Stay a while. Read the articles. Sit at the feet of great minds. You may learn.

Bwahahahahahahaha! See this only proves their superiority to the lowly Fox News viewers. They are so crafty they can prepare years in advance for something that hasn’t even happened while imbecile Fox News viewers sit around eating paste.

It seems that a tragically large part of your average leftist’s mental life is spent projecting their own shortcoming onto the other.

In general, Dems have a growing knot of anxiety that Fox News might be contributing to the MSM’s waning credibility to where its viewership plummets and sponsors become shy about having their products advertised on these networks. A nightmare scenario would ensue of the DNC trolling their over-tapped donors for the funds to keep their propaganda bureaus alive.

It’s my understanding that people in the sciences and engineering professions rarely, if ever, watch the MSM.

Funny how the number 80 was used. Because that’s the average IQ of the black population who overwhelmingly supported Obama. Not Marxist correct to mention it but they do have the lowest IQ scores in the country and that’s why the rest of us have had to withstand a constant dumbing down so they can catch up and fell better about themselves. But there will be no mention of that FACT.

Because that’s the average IQ of the black population who overwhelmingly supported Obama.

Wrong. 85 is more like remote Somali tribes, and the Flynn effect generally corrects this in a generation or two. US blacks average just under the US average and have trended upwards for a while. (Read Charles Murray fer chrissakes.) There is no distinguishable difference between you and blacks. However, cheer up — there’s a lot of difference between you and the people who work in my department.

Careful Betina you know that in PC ,MC Left Wing moonbat la la land the truth must not be spoken. You can’t say that Blacks have the scientifically proven lowest IQ’s of all the ethnic groups or that Blacks while comprising only 13% of the population, and 50% of that women, nevertheless commit over 50% of all the murders and 60% of all the violent crime in the USA and that Affirmative Action is the only way the majority of Blacks succeed because if it went on qualifications and ability they never would.
You just have to look at Africa there are no countries there, with the possible exception of Botswana, that are more law abiding,safer and more prosperous than they were under Colonial rule. In the most part they have degenerated back to the slave taking tribal warfare that preceded ‘Whitey’s’ civilizing rule. Just take Zimbabwe for example ,once Africa’s ‘Bread Basket’ now thanks to Black racism and misrule Africa’s ‘Basket Case’ and South Africa the murder and mugging capital of the world is fast heading down this self same path.
Then look at all the Black run cities in the USA and you will see crime , corruption and violence rampant just the same as in Africa.

The funniest part of the original “Beverly Hillbillies” show was that Jed was the smartest person on the show, and the “sophisticated” city folk spent most of their time stumbling over themselves. The “idiocy” in the rest of the Clampetts was really just innocence mixed with ignorance mixed with a different set of customs.

Sounds like that Eisenstadt Institute, that came up with the supposed claim, that Sarah ‘didn’t know that Africa was a continent,’ even though her church was in the forefront of the divestment movement against Sudan, a preacher from Kenya, issued a ‘despoilment’ and her husband worked for a company BP with significant interests in West Africa, a hoakster named Gorlin was revealed to be the source,

Curious, the left normally bad mouths IQ quotients as socially biased twaddle for disenfranchising their favored oppressed groups and generally having no objective reality, until they need a cherry picked sample of unreal bad IQ quotients from a hated group of people they want to bad mouth.

Honestly, how can you keep up with these people? First they say the concept of IQ is a racist tool of oppression.

Then they come out with studies that show Democrats (of course!) have higher intelligence than Republicans. A real waste of time, because Democrats are always willing to let you know how brilliant they are. Here’s one of their typical eggheads on video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio

Now they come out with bogus tests that prove that people who watch Fox News have lower IQs?

Isn’t this all racist or something? Or is it only racist when Republicans do it?

Honestly, who can keep up with their lunacy. I’ve been gladly telling everyone who asks that I’m just a stupid Republican, so please don’t ask me any hard questions. It seems to work: they leave me alone after that. Once you’ve confirmed their delusions, they seem to become less harmful.

I enjoyed our phone call today and wanted to thank you for reporting our conversation accurately.

It surprises me that many people on the internet are writing our study’s results off as a hoax. The study and its results are real. As I told you when we talked, we used scientific methodology to collect and report all data.

We didn’t realize that we would be required to put an * next to findings in order to prove legitimacy. We assumed that Fox News viewers in the South were still Fox News viewers.

The cannibalism demonstrated by non-southern Fox News viewers attacking their “red-state” counterparts illustrates the Republican party’s state of disarray.

Sometimes facts aren’t pretty. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. We sane Republicans need to work together to rebuild our brand so that we may compete in 2016. We will never win another general election so long as we allow our cancerous hand to alienate women, Hispanics, Blacks, gays, the youth, the educated, and any other non-white protestant.

I understand a lot of people hate me right now, but if they would just take a moment to think and look at factual demographic trends.

This seems to me to be yet another attempt at dividing people, which is at the core of the collectivist ideology. While I am not smart enough to figure out the agenda behind the “study” given the information you gave to Mr. Martin, I do know one thing. There are many very, very bright conservative people who live in the South and it is at the very least dishonest to characterize all of us as morons. I understand that you say the non-southern red staters say this about us, but either way, it is false and bigoted.

The results are not aimed at people like you. It should be quite apparent which demo is the target of this study. This is where you need to see the bigger picture and the greater good. Have confidence in the future.

Steve – The testing wasn’t anonymous. It is our choice to remain quiet. You are entitled to your own opinion. I encourage you to conduct a 5000 person study with controversial results and put your entire name on it. My advice is to hire a call service.

Credibility requires making the research methodology available for review by competent sources. All you have provided is your assurances this is factual, without even providing assurance that you are competent to certify such a claim.

I couldn’t begin to list all the kinds of internal research done and never released but yet affects most lives everyday. Understandably, research done in the area of intelligence can be considered quite subjective and even intimidating. However, its not out of the realm that some component(s) within the GOP has and continues to conduct a variety of internal research such as this one. It is afterall, a party decimated by another faction within the party from the 80s.

Look: you’re reporting from an organization you admit doesn’t exist, using what looks to be a cut-out phone, producing a study that seemed highly probable to have been predetermined by sample bias, in a report that you can’t show, using methodology that you assure us you is standard but for which you can’t give us any internals, producing a result that you told me in so many words was crafted around the funders’ expectations — and then can’t even name the funders.

And you wonder why I’m a bit skeptical?

Okay, tell me straight: this really is a sendup of the FD study, isn’t it?

The problem with any study of intelligence is that it starts from a flawed premise and goes down hill from there. Intelligence isn’t a uniform number.

Furthermore, the fact that you claim to have actually measured it is so fishy that I consider it to be highly unlikely. Even if it were true, I have to wonder how you found that sample of people willing to take these tests. When testing populations, you’ll often find that these testing methods are quite self selecting.

But such concepts are probably beneath you. Even assuming that you did what you claim, there is no way it could have been unbiased, especially starting with a premise like this.

You are no scientist. You are a fool, a political hack, and probably a liar.

I’m just trying to see how you did a 4 year study driven from the 2012 election.
was the data already being collected over the last 4 years and this election made someone decide to look at the data?
and with 16+ trillion (120+ underfunded liabilities) deficits I’m not so sure I care if the republican party wants me or not.
what have they done to fix the issue?
not a damned thing.
thats ok, they can bleed as easy as anyone else.

This seems to be the 2006 data from Richard Lynn. Page says copyright to 2011, so this may be the latest update. IQ in this ranges from 59 to 107 (by country.)

Fox @ 80 may be plausible after all. Explains the authoritarian douchebag variety of tea partiers and some of the more obtuse bible beaters seen on this site. I thought it was just the not-wrapped-too-tight far right, the extremes. Now I’m not so sure.

The Mortimer Institute of Psychology, where I am VP of PR, has just finished a seven-year study of TEA Party members and rank-and-file Republicans. The chief result is that the average IQ of TEA Partiers is 135 with a standard deviation of 10. The average number of college degrees held by TEA Partiers is 1.7. Meanwhile, we also found that mainline Republicans such as P Nichols have an average IQ of 78, standard deviation 7. Only 2% have finished a college degree.

We will not release the details of the study. We feel that the mainline GOP needs to be ridiculed, ostracized and vanquished. It is like a severe hemorrhoid which needs to be isolated, dried up, and removed. This is why we did the study.

We have plenty of excuses for keeping the study under wraps. But it was carefully done and should be believed because I assure you of this.

It’s not a Yahoo News story. Look at the byline – it’s PRWeb, meaning Yahoo just published it from the PRWeb Service. Someone just decided to pay PRWeb to distribute a press release for a hoax study to see what kind of coverage they could get (and probably see if it could go viral). According to PRWeb, it’s $169 to insert a press release. It’s trolling, plain and simple.

Yahoo ran this piece of junk and is stuck with it. I’m certain they don’t publish everything on the PR Web. If they do, they’re useless. If they don’t they’re also worthless for exercising the kind of judgement which caused them to run this in their news section,

That’s exactly how news syndication works. PRWeb feeds it to Yahoo in a form-readable format. Yahoo auto-posts it so that it’ll be searchable and come up in news alert hits. It’s why companies pay PRWeb and why PRWeb pays Yahoo for insertions. It’s incredibly easy to put out a press release and have it blasted out to Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Companies use this system for good. This troll used it for ill.

Because my IQ has been measured and I can honestly report that it is significantly above the numbers listed in the study, I have deduced that someone is enjoying pulling a prank.

This stinks like an Onion.

The “proof” these “conservatives” are looking for…is the discussion that takes them seriously despite the obvious clues contained within the hoax.

Unlike the global warming hoax, which sought to steal money in a confiscatory scheme based upon flawed “scientific” studies, this inane bit steals people’s sense of irony and replaces it with reactionary impulse.

1)Is it testing the reactions of Fox viewers to see how impulsive they are or their critics? (the fact that Yahoo picked up and gleefully reprinted the story captured the first leg, snapping shut on their drooling and gleeful willingness to slander anyone not in lockstep with them…also limping along soon, I suspect)

2)A four year study to test 5000 people?

3)A pre-determined outcome? Sounds like every Cloward-Piven “study” ever done by the leftists who have ruined our economy, buried our information stream under a mountain of BS, destroyed our education system and have told more and more whopping lies each and every day.

4)A four year study that was inspired by THIS election? Even Monty Python would consider that too “un-subtle” an irony.

5)If leftists do anything…it’s pee nickels and crap dimes. They print money when they run out of what they confiscate. Although, I would probably look for other humorous explanations for the P. Nichols moniker by doing some additional research.

6) “The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula.” LOL. OMG, now THAT is funny!

I take it all back. This is positively Breibartian.

If Andrew wanted to test how gullible and receptive leftists would be to “news” stories that fed their preconceived stereotypes and prejudices …he indeed may have started this four years ago and was looking toward THIS election…but, didn’t make it himself.

And, here’s the kicker…

7)“Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.”

Ahh yes, the silly far right’s GOTCHA equivalent to Rubio being asked how old the earth is. You guys are just too damn clever. Heh.

Answer you’re looking for: 16 I think. Doesn’t make the radiative physics a hoax. Clue: AGW at the base level is the same physics you see in IR remote controls. If AGW was fundamentally wrong remote controls wouldn’t work. It’s that simple. Some extrapolate via models and evil politicos think it’s carte blanche to redesign the economy. Rational minds want to get more data. But they *never* call physics a hoax.

You want to fight the alarmists? Try using the adult argument, not the kiddie one. Learn enough physics to grasp what is reality. Any moron can run around screeching “it’s a hoax.” Takes no understanding and unsurprisingly, no need for one. After all, why bother learning hard stuff and doing the homework when you can just claim HOAX*? Real respectable position, that. This is why people who claim it’s a hoax are dismissed as flaming lazy idiots. Because they are.

*Funny isn’t it how the far right mantra here is how hard the right wing works, how respectable, how justified, how you’re not the despicable “takers” with obamaphones. Why no you’re all brilliant. Yet in ***ANY*** subject you can name where real honest actual work needs to be done to be able to be truly conversant with it — “it’s a hoax!” or “I have no data and I have no idea how (and I have no clue) but Obama cheated!” And so on.

trombonist — so you can’t grasp physics and be republican? who (besides P Nichols apparently) knew?

There’s a number of reasons to vote republican that have precisely dick to do with the idiot tea party “smaller government” and social conservative crap. For example, generally republican foreign policy decisions are better thought out and government investment into technology / regulation of same under GOP leadership creates wealth; democrat foreign policy is absurdly shortsighted and what they call “investments” have more to do with inner city basketball courts.

Translated: republicans for all their faults trend to the country club variety and these guys usually hire well.

The idea that one needs to drink your koolaid or fail to be part of the republican’s super-secret handshake club is silly. Who the f**k died and made you gatekeeper? Nobody. Now, kindly sod off.

Answer you’re looking for: 16 I think. Doesn’t make the radiative physics a hoax. Clue: AGW at the base level is the same physics you see in IR remote controls. If AGW was fundamentally wrong remote controls wouldn’t work. It’s that simple. Some extrapolate via models and evil politicos think it’s carte blanche to redesign the economy. Rational minds want to get more data. But they *never* call physics a hoax.

Or see Keith Briffa’s recent work: after eliminating the statistical errors in Michael Mann’s papers on dendroclimatology, and increasing the sample, the Medieval Warm Period comes back and the current warming looks far less unusual.

The word “hoax” gets over-used. Now, I’m beginning to think the “Intelligence Institute” news release may have been a real-live no-kidding hoax: I no longer think there really is a study at all. AGW seems instead to have suffered from a lot of confirmation bias, exacerbated by a whole bunch of people being influenced by politics — simulations in particular have this problem that they tend to converge on the answer most probable to result in continued funding.

Your stance on global warming is a leftist stance, nonetheless. But not all physicists have drunk the global-warming Kool-Aid, and such physicists as have can have their objectivity called into question rather easily from those inconvenient email leaks. Many of us suspect that the scientists are in it for the money and the liberals are in it for the power. For free people to surrender their freedom, you have to sell crises.

Be sure to write back on the subject when those who are ringing the alarms bells are buying houses rather than mansions, i.e., when the ones who want me to panic are also panicking.

> There’s a number of reasons to vote republican that have precisely dick to do with the idiot tea party “smaller government”…

Idiots they may be, but what kind of idiots did it take to run up a $16 trillion debt?

> …and social conservative crap.

You wouldn’t want to live in a society where your own human life is valued as little as an unborn child’s, would you? Even slavers believed in human rights, they just kept their definition of ‘human’ selective.

> Now, kindly sod off.

So hostile! If we do sod off, we’re taking our votes with us. Let’s see a Republican get elected ever again without people like me.

I say it’s time we found out.

Meanwhile, enjoy your martinis with the People’s Republicans. Be sure to say hi to the Party Chairman.

Indeed. Looks like Briffa is climbing off of the Mann bandwagon. The IPCC is too wrapped up in the hockey stick though (e.g. Doha.) Most of the more interesting plant stomata studies were counter to the hockey stick and showed major MWP. As did everything else, especially the Idso brothers @ co2science. The claims from a decade back that the MWP was regional are pretty dead now. (And there’s still speculation that the climategate leaker was Briffa.)

Fascinating you would speak to me, the pariah, the poster who groks physics and the reality that there is AGW. Here in the fantasyville site republicans can’t possibly believe in AGW — it’s downright leftist you know. Funny thing though; knowing AGW is real isn’t the same thing as buying into Al Gore. AGW insofar as I can tell will contribute maybe 0.5 deg C to the continuing LIA recovery warmup giving us a total 1.5 to 2 deg C increase by 2100. Hardly anything to get agitated about. Yeah baby acknowledgement of radiative physics makes me a major league lefty.

trombonist — You wouldn’t want to live in a society where your own human life is valued as little as an unborn child’s, would you? Even slavers believed in human rights, they just kept their definition of ‘human’ selective.

I don’t want to live in the statist left society. And I don’t want to live in your statist right society.

You imagine yourself as a keeper of the flame, a guardian of truth and freedom and liberty, and in reality all you are is a socialist alternative, a different form of statist control. OK, so next step you’ll claim the author is a leftist. Nope. Dr. Jerry Pournelle, basic conservative, genius, author.

Your stance on global warming is a leftist stance, nonetheless.

Yeah I’m a big leftist. See reply to Charlie Martin. Acknowledging radiative physics and reckoning some influence accordingly is a commie plot. In your strange black and white world you either assume AGW is a hoax or are screeching “we’re all gonna die.” There is no middle ground possible. Here in the real world the lukewarmer contingent lead by Dr Judith Curry predicts maybe 2 deg C rise in temps by 2100 with most of that being natural signal since 1850.

Government diktat of the beginning of life, for starters; imposition of a minority religous viewpoint is statism. Secondly, women whose contraception fails are not slaves, and legislation intended to “protect life” condemns them to be walking incubators. What you advocate is slavery. That is also statist. What I advocate is that you mind your own business. That is NOT statist. Don’t want an abortion? Don’t believe in it? Don’t get one. I think we already established that you are not the gatekeeper.

Besides, it’s a losing proposition. Even if the pro-life clowns got lucky enough to have a black swan moment and get abortions outlawed, affected women hop on planes (cheaper than raising a kid) and go outside the US. Cheap, fast, simple. There is no winning position for your side; even if you “win” you don’t win. Nothing changes. And the chances of that black swan? Google black swans.

The best you can hope to attain with your statist position is to reduce the GOP to a permanent minority party.

And what is *not* statist about running around with regulations because you *think* the world is getting warmer?

And I have advocated regulations where, precisely? Oh, wait. I haven’t. It’s the people like me who are waging the only successful battles AGAINST regulations. Knowing how things work and dealing with the facts on the ground is how you win. And the fact is that AGW is real. What’s disputable isn’t physics. What’s disputable is the invented feedback mechanisms and what they imply. You don’t win because you think the alarmists are mean. You don’t win by drinking koolaid and guessing that the alarmists are hoaxers. You win by showing that the feedback mechanisms are conjecture. You win at the science level first. And at the science level you can argue against regulation.

Unfortuntely it’s getting increasingly tougher to argue against regulation because the statist minority of the GOP (that would be you, sparky) insists upon making the GOP an ineffective political minority. What that means is that if we’re stuck with absurd future regulations and you want to place blame, just look in the mirror.

Well, an unborn child is alive, so it’s life must have begun at some point, right? If it were dead already, there would be no need to abort it. And it’s undeniably human, if DNA evidence is allowed. So it’s human, and it’s life… that seems indisputable to me. We have murder laws, so the law is dictating that it is wrong to take human life at least in some circumstances.

Can you offer me some criteria telling me why the law should not protect the life of an unborn baby, but should protect, say, yours? Presence of a soul, perhaps? Sorry, that’s a religionist notion, I know. I can’t prove a baby has a soul — but then you’re in that same boat too, aren’t you? I can’t prove you have one either.

Basically, in the abortionist world view, it always seems to come down to this: it’s okay to kill people if enough other people find it convenient. And it helps a lot if the ones you want dead can’t defend themselves.

> …imposition of a minority religous viewpoint is statism.

Murder laws started out as religious viewpoints. So did laws against slavery. But you beg the question when you call it a minority religious viewpoint. Maybe it is a minority today, but maybe it won’t be tomorrow. Either way, the Supreme Court circumvented the entire democratic process. *That* was statist.

A majority of voters were against gay marriage. Did that stop the Democrats from persevering on the issue? There are no losing issues, there are only losing champions. It is my bad luck to be stuck with my heros, the Republicans. They could use some of the Democrats’ willingness to stand tall in a stiff wind.

> Secondly, women whose contraception fails are not slaves, and legislation intended to “protect life” condemns them to be walking incubators.

They made a decision. Some decisions have consequences.

> What you advocate is slavery. That is also statist.

If a woman bears a child and then just lets it sit in the crib without feeding it, it will die. Why do we have have laws against child neglect if in some respect we are not tethering a mother to a responsibility?

> What I advocate is that you mind your own business.

So if someone kills you, should I consider that to be his business?

> That is NOT statist. Don’t want an abortion? Don’t believe in it? Don’t get one. I think we already established that you are not the gatekeeper.

Apparently, you are. You have been reading religious conservatives right out of the Republican Party. Hey no problem — I’m ready to leave under my own power.

> Besides, it’s a losing proposition. Even if the pro-life clowns got lucky enough to have a black swan moment and get abortions outlawed, affected women hop on planes (cheaper than raising a kid) and go outside the US.

Okay, then, we will have done our duty to the extent possible. Nobody said abortion laws would make the world perfect. We could pass laws mandating smartness, but I doubt it would affect Republican campaigns very much.

> The best you can hope to attain with your statist position is to reduce the GOP to a permanent minority party.

The GOP doesn’t need my help to do that. All they have to do is keep running these blandly establishmentarian, convictionless gangs of empty suits.

>> And I have advocated regulations where, precisely? Oh, wait. I haven’t. It’s the people like me who are waging the only successful battles AGAINST regulations. Knowing how things work and dealing with the facts on the ground is how you win. And the fact is that AGW is real. What’s disputable isn’t physics. What’s disputable is the invented feedback mechanisms and what they imply. You don’t win because you think the alarmists are mean. You don’t win by drinking koolaid and guessing that the alarmists are hoaxers. You win by showing that the feedback mechanisms are conjecture. You win at the science level first. And at the science level you can argue against regulation.

Congratulations, you have actually scored a point. I agree to a large extent. Problem is, though, that you’re barking against the science establishment and they’re about as receptive to scientific arguments from the other side as you are to my abortion argument.

> Unfortuntely it’s getting increasingly tougher to argue against regulation because the statist minority of the GOP (that would be you, sparky) insists upon making the GOP an ineffective political minority.

Sorry, Slick, but by your own logic, we don’t have to worry about ineffectiveness because, as you point out, we shouldn’t argue our case when it can cost us votes. If the majority believes in global warming, we would be statist to argue otherwise. So the Republican Party will realize its goal, to stand for absolutely nothing except pandering to the whatever the majority says. Politicians often lack principles, but you are suggesting that’s a feature of politics, not a bug.

> What that means is that if we’re stuck with absurd future regulations and you want to place blame, just look in the mirror.

Or look in yours, as Republicans continue to alienate the only people who have stood by them in their lean years.

trombonist — …you’re barking against the science establishment and they’re about as receptive to scientific arguments from the other side as you are to my abortion argument.

I am unreceptive to your abortion argument because it was decided 40 years ago. For that duration you so-cons have been screeching loudly and you are no closer to success. Sisyphus at least got the rock up the hill. The only thing you are doing is dragging the entire GOP into your own private hell. I’ve watched you guys derail the last two presidential elections. You expect receptiveness to anything other than an offer of seppuku?

> I am unreceptive to your abortion argument because it was decided 40 years ago.

Decided? In what way? Do you mean settled? Morally? I don’t think so, Tim. Do you mean decided by the majority you keep touting? Only if by majority you mean majority of the Supreme Court.

Do you mean decided ‘practically’? Look around you. When Democrats lost at the polls, does that stop them? Do they change their positions? On an issue here or there, temporarily, but they never stop working for their ideals. They never quit.

By contrast, there’s lots of quit in the GOP.

You seem to believe that it’s a political party’s primary job to win elections today, and only secondary to actually stand for something and fight until it’s won.

What the hell did conservatives ever do to deserve Republicans? Wotta bunch of losers.

> For that duration you so-cons have been screeching loudly and you are no closer to success.

Liberals don’t mind screeching. It gets them what they want. Maybe Republicans should try it sometime.

> Sisyphus at least got the rock up the hill. The only thing you are doing is dragging the entire GOP into your own private hell.

The GOP could stop that tomorrow. “Hey, social cons. Hey, Tea Partiers. This is the GOP. We don’t want your votes. We don’t want your money. We don’t want your issues. Go away.”

But they won’t. And you and I know why. What the GOP wants is for social cons and Tea Partiers to keep voting GOP and sending money, but then to sit down and STFU. Tail wags dog.

> I’ve watched you guys derail the last two presidential elections.

You’re delusional. We telling me we ran two extreme conservatives? John McCain and Mitt Romney?

Just one more thing: if social conservatives, Tea Partiers, Christian conservatives, etc. only knew just how much the GOP hates them, they would cast no more votes for Republicans. It’s not a very well-kept secret, but the GOP nonetheless tries not to broadcast it.

Look at a summary of 2011/12 headlines and sample the blogosphere etc and it’s clear that the candidates were moderates and their campaign messages were drowned by reportage and discussion of social issues; i.e. the social conservative war on females and gays.

There are many here who note the same thing and blame media bias. This is the source of PJ articles re gotcha questions for Rubio; this perception that the media lies in wait and controls the discussion. Others noting the exact same thing I just did above were claiming that the war on women meme was an Obama invention intended to deflect voters from looking at his poor record. They claim (accurately) that the Romney campaign was very staying away from the social issues. And yet this often dominated the reportage.

(As a sidebar, whay would the campaign do that? In your silly world it’s because they’re weaklings and wannabe leftists. In the real world it’s because they were very well aware that these are the kiss of electoral death.)

So if I’m delusional then why was this very site consumed with screeching about biased media for two weeks after the election? Was everyone delusional? Clearly your argument isn’t about the reality of the perception itself, but what I have concluded.

In truth, no, I’m nowhere near delusional. I noticed what everyone else noticed, that the candidate messages were derailed. The difference between me and social conservatives is that I’m not claiming the media is a conspiracy, but that the social conservatives did it themselves. And if you’re within shouting distance of intellectually honest and have even the barest hint of how Ockham’s Razor works, clearly it’s the social conservatives who are to be thanked for electing Obama.

The more social conservative you are the worse it gets. Run on your abortion morals platform and the GOP can’t get a gig as dogcatcher.

It strikes me that perhaps you could miscontrue what I am saying here, so I’ll try to put this differently.

It’s claimed the media can destroy Romney’s campaign and get Obama elected merely by pushing the war on women/gay buttons; clearly there’s a reason how and why that works. That it works at all is the point.

If as you think the public has no need to fear the so-cons and in fact sorta supports them and the US is center right then this button pushing attempt would never work at all. Since the button pushing by the media works, do you have an explanation that would be accepted at the university level?

Think you will get an answer or even an acknowledgement that you are correct from such a brain dead egoist as ‘randomengineer’. Even his blog name oozes arrogance and egotism if his condescending posts had not already confirmed that.
Ignore him until he can explain how , with C02 emissions continuing to rise unabated, that the earth temperature has not risen at all in 16 YEARS. Perhaps he knows of some secret INERT C02 or some secret Green NAZI project which is saving the planet. Or more likely he is still slave to the bleatings of the sheep the naive , gullible fools in the Lame Stream EneMedia and power hungry Politicians who have been pushing this SCAM now for all its worth for decades now. Of course you must suspend belief and logic when you know that the people who are pushing this Climate SCAM are the very SAME people who gave you the ICE AGE SCAM in the 70′s and 80′s and the OZONE LAYER SCAM in the 90′s. But hush mustn’t mention that.

The global warming folks’s arguments should be subjected to the same standards of rigor by its opponents that the race-IQ-genes folks are subjected to by the libtards. I.e., there’s no such thing as “enough.” Anyone considering falling for AGW should first examine the way the libtards handle the overwhelming evidence that IQ (and group differences in IQ) is roughly 80% genetic. In fact, the libtards’ demands for ironclad, perfect “proof” here should be applied to all of their assumptions (poverty causes black crime, welfare cures poverty, education cures poverty, big gov’t is good, racial equality within the skull, etc.).

Intellectual arrogance rarely, if ever, unifies the majority mass on many issues. Well, I take that back! There are several nations led by the intellectual arrogance of tyrants and dictators — though most always self acclaimed.

Moreover, the sniveling toadies who continue to puke out the “the science is settled” and “you must grovel at our altar because WE are the intellectual elite”…is not science, it’s d-baggery.

When we succumb to the instinct to allow a better moral basis than is warranted by those who have shown a proclivity for being slanderous, lying, indoctrinating, information thieves…we tilt the search for truth in favor of the rotted soul.

I, for one…will no longer engage in the soft acceptance of the rape of our information stream.

This drooling fool who accepts without serious inquiry the disproved and disgraced indoctrination scheme is a fly attracted to the intellectual fecal matter left for him to devour by his exalted leftist masters.

A “hoax” is too kind. This confiscatory scheme is of the same ilk as every other leftist confiscatory scheme. What they intended to do was steal more money from “the haves” in order to build their Socialist Castle in the Sky.

Our broken fiscal system in California, now in our federal government and all over Europe is part and parcel of this nefarious idiocy.

They can ruin a state, ruin a country and ruin a continent. But, I’m not going to continue to mince words about how utterly ignorant and evil they truly are.

I suggest every other patriot to do the same. If not for yourselves, then for your children. It is bad enough that we shamed our fathers by letting them rape our information stream and steal our culture with lies and distortions. But, we should at least try to not shame our offspring by handing them a shattered future….without a fight. I would just as soon see the commenting fool hanged as a traitor, since there is no hope he would engage enough firing synapses to follow a discussion where he had to think for himself.

About that Fairleigh Dickinson study that “proved” Fox News viewere were “the least informed” it should be noted that no group of media consumers they surveyed averaged more than 1.5 correct answers out of 8 questions (NPR listeners). To say that NPR and Daily Show fans are the best informed from those results is the equivalent of calling them the tallest midgets! In fact, the study shows that pretty much everyone was pretty uninformed and no medium was up to the task of fixing that.

The folks flogging the FDU article as proof of NPR superiority to Fox were seriously PWN3D!

Intelligence is nothing without good *ideas*. Ideas are the software of the human mind; intelligence is merely the CPU speed. If you are running buggy software, you don’t fix it with a CPU upgrade; all that does is help you crash faster.

random appears to be some kind of lefty troll with his obvious dislike of religion and small government. That means it does not know what defines conservative. It thinks that Republican = conservative when actually Republican = trough feeder.

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Ideas are not knowledge. They are only potential knowledge. Knowledge is what makes the world go around, and knowledge about where ones’ knowledge ends and speculation begins is even more valuable — and rare.

The Left is the side that brandishes ideas as if they are knowledge handed down from on high. Problem is, a horrible idea can sound too much like a good one. I’m sure it sounded like a great idea to open up Fannie and Freddie to mortgages for the poor. One of these days, the United States of America will be dead and gone. I don’t know which great idea of the Left will finally have done us in for good, but the gravestone should read, “It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

Fox viewers? Uh, no. I don’t think so. I do not follow Fox anymore (high cable prices, Bill O’Reilly, and ol’ Shep put an end to that), but I am certain that thinking people in this country (including the lazy pigs who failed to show up to the polls in 2012, and you know who you are) are looking for some sort of alternative to the kiddie-lit-major “journalists” who read the daily news on the alphabet stations.

A quick check of IQ levels by state indicates that the states that voted for Obama in November’s election had a lower average IQ. The most glaring example was Washington, DC., which ranks dead last on the state IQ level, but 92% of DC’s population voted for Obama.

And while I’m certainly in the camp that this study has some quite significant methodological shortfalls, I can’t help but point out that, as we see here (link ) , 92% of DC’s population can’t vote. Probably closer to 85%. Then you have to take out the actual Romney voters. Then you have to winnow out the folks who actually voted from the overall population.

Then you can start looking at aggregate IQ vs voting patterns.

So, it’s quite likely that the IQ stat and voting outcomes are not mutually exclusive, even if both as stated are true.

When surfing the cable channels, Fox News is what I consider “fly-over country.” But it’s not the lone ranger. Same deal with NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and PBS, unless they’re playing a symphony concert. I rely on Drudge links, Instapundit and PJMedia to talk about the stories I’m interested in. I probably spend more time on MSNBC than Fox because sometimes I can’t get away quickly enough before I hear something that makes my jaw drop… then I stick around long enough to know I could never survive the fumes there.

I used to enjoy Fox News but then Brit Hume left his full-time gig there and Tony Snow died, and I’m not really interested in anything Sheppard Smith or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity has to say about anything. That goes double for Greta. I don’t know why anybody listens to any of them. Or Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Bashir on the other side either. Half-baked pundits are a buzzkill whichever side of the aisle they bleat from.

Same with half-baked studies seeking to discredit right-leaning viewers.

Yes sir, every marching band has their drummers to keep their flock in time and in step with each other. While the democrat ‘party’ marches on in unity; in time and in step, the GOP trods on with vocal ensembles singing their songs of division and blame to each of their audiences. There isn’t a nickles worth of difference between any of the parties political media and messaging venues and talking heads. Self serving propaganda at every turn!

A real mess the intellect elites and their flocks of the past 50 years has bestowed upon America, eh?

Did P Nichols happen to catch the 11th graders’ recent test scores compiled by the good people of Highland Park, MI? 90% failed the reading portion, 96% failed math and 100% failed social studies.

The melanin makeup of Highland Park suggests that 97% of the voters had a 95% chance of being Obama supporters. Living on a liberal plantation like Highland Park and the rest of Detroit, MI and continuing to vote in Dems is the ultimate in dumb and dumber.

Keeping people dependent and stupid seems to be the formula for getting 100# of their votes.

This ought to make those CNN viewers feel better after that embarrasing report came out about the correlation between Anderson Cooper fans and decreased libido.

C’mon it is an obvious spoof. “We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.” That could have come straight from the Onion.
He didnt even pick a reasonable number. Only 15% of people have an IQ less than 85 and Fox is by far the most viewed news channel in the US.

Pretty lame and typical Libstain mentality. Conservative group does the study? I doubt it. I guess I am in the low percentage since I have 3 degrees. I watch FOX because I’ve grown weary of the lamestream media lies, fabrications, propaganda, irresponsible reporting and the list is long. I have their 80% IQ right where the American sun doesn’t shine. You can go on Facebook anytime with my name and find me. I will be glad to discuss this garbage with anyone.

Missing the overall goal of this tripe study, it has nothing to do with IQ but everything to do with people’s need for validation and not being labeled or boxed into a (not real bright intelligence) corner. It is all about discouraging people due to a collective public stigma and label from watching or turning to FOX NEWS. As Faculty member have observed, there is a need for these fellow educated people to be recognized for their status by belonging to an elitist group that wins them approval. As part of the same faculty for years have observed that the most insecure indulge in this form of validation and fall pray to this simple labeling. As an example, one faculty member loudly pronounced that they did not know what channel FOX NEWS was on her Cable.

This is the sort of stuff that the far left does to silence people by saying that if one does not go along, they are prejidious, or some other social stigmatic label, and people then keep their mouth shout.

Taken one step farther, any opinion not of the elitist pack is seen as less intelligent or shunning by the pack.

Truth is these people are insecure and afread. Being a strong conservatrive and ex-military retired, have backed many down in meeting with simple truth to their silly rants. These people can only run with the pack as their insecurities and need for attention are dominate part of their makeup. They only serface and open-up when then can control and dominate others by putting them down.

Your little screed against the poor, fragile, members of the elitist intelligentsia is riddled with spelling errors. Wow, that pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

But, I do agree that our arguments about our differences should be based on facts (which you claim to wield with such power). Unfortunately, you won’t get facts from Faux Nooze, you’ll get half-truths, innuendo, gossip, and spin. And, consequently, it’s listeners are certifiably misinformed as other, more credible studies have shown.

Polls orginally were used to figure out what people were thinking or doing. Today polls are constructed to drive the news and people’s agendas. The first time I got involved in statistics (from a non-professional point of view) was following the work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick at Climate Audit. It was really fascinating to see how advanced statistical analysis works. But, more importantly it was fascinating and disturbing to see how statistics can be used to get results you want. Whether it is Michael Mann’s PCAs or NOAA’s TOB adjustments, or NASA’s homogenization algorithims, intelligent people with agendas can paint any picture they want.

This poll done to “study” Fox News viewership was quite as sophisticated. The pollsters used a pre-determined demographic, added in some questionable methodolgy (which remains private) and then derives the needed result.

I think if ever there was a time when the SHTF I would rather be with the rural, dumb rednecks and hillbillies than any of those effete, liberal intellectuals professor types. Who do you suppose will have a better chance at survival?

While in other news the “myth/logic press” staff has conducted a one minute self assessment study and determined that based on all the inteligence questions I asked myself I must have an IQ of 100. I extrapolated that out to the entire broadcast news viewing audience with a minimal error of plus or minus 50% to determine that all broadcast news watchers must have an IQ between 50 and 150. While admittedly this study was conducted with a limited sample and no scientific basis, it must be at least as valid as the “study” conducted by the “conservative” think tank Mr. Nichols is promoting. At least my bell curve actually resembles a bell curve.

If there comes a time where the SHTF, I would rather be with rural, dumb rednecks and hillbillies than effete, intellectual Marxist professor types. Who do you suppose will have a better chance at survival?

Why did we need a study to tell us this? I thought this was obvious going back to studies that showed how many Faux Nooze audience members believed in the WMD hoax foisted on us by the Bush/Cheney crime family.

Anyone that’s taken college stats would know that’s a fake. 5000 of any population quickly starts to normalize, in other words if Fox viewers were of a lower IQ than average it would be 5 points not 20. But it’s a lock that viewers of ANY cable news program are probably an average of 110 or higher right out of the box.

Either way liberals are always trying to create cover for their own ignorance.

Before you even get into any stats, one rule of thumb is that round numbers are suspicious. There’s no reason for the average IQ of any group to be a round number. It would have been slightly (but only slightly) more plausible if they claimed 82.7 or 78.8.

This is why the “10% gay” talking point was always preposterous on its face.

Precisely; How can you perform a study of something that you have no concept of, in the first place.

P. Nichols said, “The sample was selected with a goal in mind.”
What more needs to be said? It was intended to create data to support a flawed theory to start out with.
And with the intelligence level of the staff performing the “research”, I’d say that an I.Q. of 80 is about the highest they’ve ever heard of.

US gives A123 battery in Michigan 250 million. Company goes under, and is purchased by the Chinese who lent us the 250 million. Did that stimulate our economy?
Sorry I’m off topic, but couldn’t resist showing my IQ.

“More ‘info’ ‘to’ this study can be ‘seen’…”
Exceedingly vernacular and faulty grammar from the authors of a four-year study conducted by an institute that calls itself “Intelligence”.
I’m not shocked by the poor language skills of a liberal hoax artist – he is no doubt a recent graduate of One Of Our Finer State Universities, and knows more about sin tax than syntax; but I am dismayed that a major purveyor of news could so easily be taken in: it suggests that the intrepid newshounds at Yahoo were already deceived before they ever heard of the “study”…

When I have the unfortunate experience of accidentally watching Sheperd Smith for only a few seconds, I feel as if my IQ has been lowered substantially. He is one of the few liberals on that network after all.

Although I studied (successfully) in a well-known, high-class university, when I left my IQ had only reached the 81 mark (which is high for a graduate of most universities, including the one I attended). At that time I was watching CNN and BBC neither of which had any effect on raising my IQ other than getting on my nerves. In order to get honest news reports, I turned to FoxNews, which I had heard was an honest network, with charming, intelligent and, yes, good-looking male & female anchors. I found myself transfixed at the high and honest quality of all their staff (except a certain Alan Colmes who was a dyed-in-the-wool far-left Democrat with an IQ of -80). After only 3 months, I took an internet test on my IQ and was gratified, but not surprised, to learn that my IQ was now 120. As this was several years ago, my IQ has risen even higher. So, what the university and all its ‘intellectual’ professors had failed to do, FoxNews had succeeded in doing. That’s why folk with an IQ of 80 or so turn to FoxNews assured that even in a short period of viewing they will learn much and their IQ’s will soar. FoxNews should get a Nobel Prize, but seeing it is too ‘rightwing’ for norwegian commies, I guess it never will.

OK, I will bite: If Republicans are morons I say we institute a POLL TEST. We can separate the wheat from the chaff with a few simple questions like-
–What is the current size of the economy? (Answer- about $3.3 Trillion).

–What was the size of the economy under Bush (A: about 2.7 Trillion- extra credit for identifying the yearly “stimulus” package as the difference).

–How much of the tax burden is paid by the top 1% (A: Nearly 50%).

–How much of the tax burden is paid by the BOTTOM 50% (A: 0).

–If we take ALL the money of the everyone making 250,000 and over, how long could we fund the government? (A: around 100 days- leaving 265 days for the rest of us to pay- except we now have no jobs because everybody’s boss is now on welfare).

No edit feature so the question is what is the current size of the GOVERNMENT (not the economy which is upwards of $15T GDP in 2012). An easy mistake to make since ALL the focus is on the GOVERNMENT these days.

Even though it barely moves the creativity needle you couldn’t have even made something this pathetic up because you’re the guy that’s NOT clever but DOES have a “little dick”, as you volunteered in your comments above.

The geniuses who elected to release this “study” are counting on their target audience to fit their “impartial, independent, non profit, objective, conservatively motivated” profile of the FOX News viewer. As of the morning of November 7, 2012 they have very good reason to believe that. This will no doubt be accepted as unadulterated, unbiased, fact based reporting concerning those “poor, unfortunate, ignoramuses,” no offence intended, who watch FOX News.

Perhaps the willful suspension of the use of one’s intellect, necessary to accept the propaganda on Fox, does result in the atrophy of said intellect. Fox has morphed from somewhat willing to tackle controversial subjects, such as possible Israeli involvement in 9-11, to a mouthpiece for the globalists. The Fox special speaking of the infamous “dancing Israeli’s” who were sent to record the event has long since been scrubbed from their archives (but not from mine). Now Fox is pushing for the overthrow of Assad, with “chemical weapons” being the justification once again for an invasion. Fox is simply an example of Orwellian Newspeak. If Syria falls, and the jihadis turn Assad’s arsenal south, watch Fox’s turn from lauding them as “freedom fighters” to “terrorists”. Like the case of the Stern Gang, freedom fighter or terrorist is simply a label, applied in a Bernaysian manipulation of the unaware.

Be forewarned, Sparky, for my support of the rabid Socialist, Muslim, Communist, Fascist, foreign-born Obama, they promised me I could ride along with the posse that will be collecting all the guns with the understanding that I can confiscate all the cheap beer and NASCAR posters for myself. So, I’m coming for your guns, SUCKA!!

There are a couple of possible explanations. First, that the “80″ is actually a hexadecimal number which in base-10 notation represents 16*8 = 128. Second, and more likely, the analysis was performed by people whose concept of higher math is typified as “1, 2 and ‘many’”

the viewer i.q. may be higher but the tits and ass empolyees of fox news and shep smith probably dont break 70. but isnt it fun to watch. lots of laughs and books and tee shirts to be had. where is that in the alinsky playbook.

And if I did, it would be a much more imaginative Pseudonym, one that does not mock the film character whose name it echoes by being the polar opposite in all matters intellectual, spiritual, and moral of that character.

Must be due to the large number of liberal and democrats who have been almost fatally brainwashed. They are incapable to think for themselves and will have to learn. They are salvageable since they made the first step, get their news from the right sources and their IQ will slowly increase. (will not include Hanity too far to the rt even though he tries to counterbalance MSNBC).
Assumption: the study was totally objective and unbiased in any way, shape or form.
Otherwise comments do not apply.

I would like to have a study comparing the intelligence of George Bush, Hannity and O’Reilly to Russell Kirk’s or Bill Buckley’s. The low IQ seems to be the problem of the GOP media promoters and leaders. Intelligent people sat this election out because the GOP sucks. Only geniuses like Boehner and Rove did not notice that yet.

So, that proves it. I graduated from Harvard in 1968, served 3 years as a naval officer on DDs (a VERY busy series of jobs) and have a PhD. The screeching Chicagoan (“Hey ‘Bama, wheyah ma FONE?!!!”) has a higher IQ than I. Does this release smack of ONION? Anyway, I eagerly await the first Pinko Buffoon to toss this assinine drivel in my direction. They will rue the day their mothers caught their fathers eye.

Similar to it’s not that Barry Obama won the Presidency that terrifies me but the millions of rubes that could be so shallow to believe the O.B.S. (twice), what is most unsettling about this article is not the obvious bias of the conclusions but the fact millions will believe the results.

Goebbels had nothing on what passes for news anymore.

I gag every time I hear a politician state, “The American people are smart and…”.

No, they are not. And this last election only confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, they are not smart.

Leaving aside the Troll Bashing, the measuring of other people’s intelligence requires that you yourself possess enough of both Intelligence and Wisdom to possess the Humility and Discernment between how well and how much other people serve you and agree with you and how well and how much they serve themselves and form their own opinions based on their own life experiences.

Saying that the audience for Fox is less intelligent than the audience for MSNBC or visa-versa is like saying cats are dumber than dogs because dogs view you as part of their Pack while cats view you as either their kittens or their servants.

And yes, try and find pity in your heart for people insecure and arrogant enough to insist that because you don’t agree with them you must surely be stupid, and can only express their disapproval of you with shrill insults.

Mature Adults do lose their tempers, and calm down. Manchildren don’t know how to slow down and find their way out of the temper tantrum.

Funny, but if you’ve ever watched any of the many YouTube videos or interviews from other sources of Obama supporters you know quite quickly who has the very low IQ’s. The free cell phone people, entitlement addicts, racists blacks who want to kill whites, mexican flag waving illegal LaRaza commies, thug union goons and clueless OWS types is a pretty fair cross-section.

More monsense from the Left and as far as the supposed conservative study group, who are they? what credentials do they have? well I watch only FOX and im a memner of Mensa my IQ is above 140 but if my IQ was 50 I’d still have enough sense to watch only FOX.

I’d as soon start keeping a log of the size, volume, consistency and content of my bowel movements. In fact, the fact that submitting a stool and sputem sample to pass the Gesundheitspass that allows you to work in a restaurant in Germany suggests that a more detailed knowledge of your bowel movements and the contents of you sinuses is more useful and important than poncing around bragging on your IQ.

It’s what you do with what you’ve been given that matters most, not the size of it.

Interestingly enough, I happen to be a Scatologist, and find the collection and study of such data to be quite fascinating. If you would like, I would be happy to show you samples of my work, perhaps helping you in gathering and organizing your own data in a usable format. As we say at the office, there’s nothing like getting your shit together! That always gets them at the yearly convention…

Interestingly, my IQ is comparable to ex-President Clinton’s, I was raised on a farm, know how to kick sod and, I watch Fox News. Now we all know that Obama won’t release his college records or academic accomplishments, but rumor has it that he watches FOX News when Michelle isn’t around. This survey didn’t contact me for evaluation, probably because I clean my boots before entering the house.

The ‘dumbest’ people I have ever known were “raised” on a farm. On the other hand, the smartest people I’ve ever known were/are farmers and ranchers.

In my old cow puncher, sod buster mind, the only important people of the world are farmers/ranchers, servicemen/women. Without them, the rest of you wouldn’t be able to sustain life and have a secure nation to live and proclaim yourselves as the intellectually elite.

I am a Fox news watcher and even have a college degree. Wonder how that happened? Prefer FOX except when they show the idiots like Rivera, Shep and Beckel staring back at me. But then I have an IQ a bit higher than most of those in the 70 and lower IQ range who seem to adore the idiots on NBC and their left of left ally MSNBC.

This “study” was meant for one purpose only, to give lefties something “scientific” to reference when calling conservatives & Fox News viewers stupid. Fifty years ago these same people would have been making up “science” about black people to prove their inferior intellect.

Same tactic, different century.

They won’t even link to the study or know where to find it online, they’ll simply mention “that study.” That’s all they need. And the authors don’t care if we disprove it or if we discredit them. The point was to get it into the lefty consciousness, to reinforce their stereotype of those who disagree with them as stupid (another study will, I’m sure, “prove” us to be evil as well).

This is coming from a man with a Master’s degree and some who taught at multiple levels. Do you know how hard it is to find people with an IQ of 80? They surveyed 5000 viewers, and half of them watched Fox News. Of those that watched Fox News, there average IQ had been 80? However, using the same method to select the other candidates had been the same for those that didn’t watch Fox News. The entire study oddly appears to be completely false from the beginning with every ounce of the word.

Of course a laughable study, but even if it were true, an IQ of 80 would beat by 30 points those lefties who have their tongues on Communist auto speak, such as Debby Wasserman- Smith. Just punch in a question and you get the whole spiel back word for word, every time, regardless of the question.

I knew there was a reason why I struggled to start and build my own business and chose to work for myself as opposed to someone else. I clearly didn’t have the common sense to let someone else take all the risks, take on the debt and pay the taxes.

This is why I believe the Democrats and Republicans to be two sides of the same corrupt coin. I don’t watch television specifically to keep my IQ from dropping to 80. I’m a nurse and If I remember correctly , an individual with an IQ of 80 would require constant supervision, much like the members of our government. You cannot believe anything you hear on television since every channel is controlled by Big Brother and he only tells you what he wants you to believe. KILL YOUR TV!
Even people with high IQs are being brainwashed/deceived by the mesmerizing quality of the boob tube. The USA is doomed. Read “The Harbinger” by Jonathan Cahn or watch his YouTube video. There is NO political solution, therefore the USA will flounder and die.